Various types of machines are known for cutting, splicing and winding tape into cassettes. By way of example, my U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,637,153; 3,717,314; 3,737,358; 3,753,834; 3,753,835; and 3,787,270 disclose machines for loading magnetic tape into cassettes. Such machines comprise means for rotatably supporting a reel of supply tape, means for holding a blank cassette having two rotatable spools and a leader tape connected to the two spools, means for selectively rotating one of the spools, and cutting and splicing means for (a) cutting the leader tape into two sections, (b) splicing the end of one leader section to the leading end of the supply tape, (c) cutting the supply tape after a predetermined amount of such tape has been wound into the cassette, and (d) splicing the end of the other leader section to the trailing end of the supply tape that has been wound into the cassette. Additionally, some machines have been provided with means for ejecting the loaded cassette from its holder.
While such machines have gained great acceptance by the magnetic tape cassette industry, the rising cost of labor has created a demand for an improved cassette loading machine which avoids the need for an operator to (a) manually load an empty cassette into its holding means, (b) withdraw the leader from the cassette and properly place it upon the splicing block assembly, (c) remove the loaded cassette if no automatic ejection means is provided, and (d) initiate operation of the machine each time a new cassette has been inserted into the cassette holder with its leader withdrawn and placed on the splicing block assembly.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,814,343 issued to W. P. Bennett et al discloses a machine arranged to automatically load cassettes one at a time with magnetic tape. However, the Bennett et al machine utilizes a cassette receiver, which is movable bidirectionally in two different modes, for receiving cassettes one at a time from a cassette storage magazine and positioning the received cassette in a selected tape loading position. Such a receiver is costly, space consuming, and requires a complicated drive means for causing the receiver to move in either of two directions in each of its two possible modes of movement. A further limitation of the Bennet et al apparatus is that the leader withdrawal and positioning means and the splicing block are complicated, expensive, consume a large amount of space, and unduly increase the time required to carry out a complete cassette loading operation.